


Invention of A Thousand Steps

by Snapescapades



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, F/M, Gen, Misgendering, Suicide Attempt, Trans Character, Trans Severus Snape, Trans Snape Week, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27709499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snapescapades/pseuds/Snapescapades
Summary: Reporter: “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?”Thomas Edison: “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
Relationships: Severus Snape/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Invention of A Thousand Steps

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever fanfiction! Created for Trans Snape Week 2017 Day 7; A little under 3,000 words. Content warnings for misgendering (at first), violence mention, SWM mention, suicide attempt. It’s a bit dark in the middle but there is a happy ending, I promise!

The first time barely even counts. It’s just Polyjuice and Lily and Severus making fun of each other and when it doesn’t wear off by bedtime, it’s giggling and sneaking back into their second-year dormitories under cloaks so no one will see that they are each other, rather than themselves. And this first time, Severus doesn’t even look down. There are things you do to a person’s body when they are there to decide it’s okay, he thinks, but this isn’t like that. This body isn’t _his_.

The second time, though, it’s different, and neither of them really knows why they do it. Only Severus changes, and they hold four identical hands between their identical bodies, and in the yellow candlelit dungeon room, something unnoticeable changes. But the tension breaks—Lily’s doing, as always—and she teaches him how to walk and how to flick her smooth wave of red hair over his shoulder and how to sit with one knee kicked up over the other. And when she laughs and says, _you’re actually good at this,_ that unnoticeable something wakes up and gives its first quiet cheer.

The next time, neither of them is thinking personally, at least not officially. It’s just a potions project, one of many they need to invent if they are to take their O.W.L. two years early. Like Polyjuice, only just your gender changes; you get to keep the rest of yourself. Lily thinks it’s clever, so they start work, delving through ancient, must-smelling tomes of obscure sex and gender magic. Some of them are far too Dark for Lily’s taste, but Severus loves them all, swearing that when he grows up, he’ll be the foremost scholar on this stuff, this subject that no one really talks about, outside of books, anyway.

The first test of this new O.W.L. potion makes Severus vomit and eventually cry, fills him so full of estrogen that it’s _practically poisonous_. Lily panics, and Slughorn is drawn into it too, trying to put things right.

After that, they test on rats first.

 _It’s all right though;_ Severus says later, _even Thomas Edison had to test the light bulb a thousand times before it worked._ So they do. Test 92 does work; it works perfectly. And when Severus’s blood test shows testosterone at 30 ng/dl—scientific as always—he actually laughs. And Lily looks up, because it’s a laugh she’s never heard before.

The potion is hot pink, to both their vague disgusts.

The first time Severus uses _she,_ alone and awake again in the middle of the night in his fourth year dormitory, it sounds like a joke. But a joke wouldn’t make him sit up in bed as though he had received an electric shock. And it wouldn’t make him stare through the green bed curtains at something that wasn’t there. After that, it takes him three tries to ask Lily if she would try she, just, you know, to try it out—I don’t know—since I spend half my time like that nowadays anyway, for testing, all right? If you didn’t think—if it wasn’t, you know, _weird_ , or anything. _Sure,_ Lily says, and Severus thinks that at least you can’t die of embarrassment twice.

* * *

She still gets a thrill out of it, even months later after all her most perceptive classmates have caught on. The first time she goes to a Slug Club party in a dress, Lily’s gaggle of friends act as her bodyguard, and it amazes her that these girls will protect her without wanting anything in return. For whatever reason, they guarantee her safety that night, so she is confident enough to pick a fight with Potter, and then to jeer that he wouldn’t hit a _girl,_ would he? And thinking, _oh yes he will._

When Potter strips Severus naked before the whole school, and then she shows up to class two days later with her nails painted, it finally ceases to be a science project. Lily wonders if Potter didn’t do what he did half out of curiosity. And even though it shouldn’t make what he did any better, somehow, to Lily’s mind, it does. Later that week, Lily nudges Mary, points to Severus, and asks if Mary will ask _him_ to hand her _his_ silver knife. Severus does, only blade first, and hard. And it doesn’t get any better from there.

Surprisingly, it’s Narcissa who cares least, and ends up caring most. She would have given Severus half her closet, had she let her. Lucius is similarly welcoming, and Regulus positively smitten, for what Severus believes are all the right reasons. So she goes to their bonfires, and gets drunk, and dances with the boys, and feels for all the world like a normal teenage witch. And when they swear collectively to get revenge on the people who have hurt her, Severus feels downright loved.

Another twenty-odd tries, and she gets the hot pink potion right, _right_ right, so that it lasts 25 hours and can be taken every 24. She makes a massive batch at the beginning of every year, and then divides it into 365 tiny vials, which are transferred a month at a time from her storeroom to her bedside table drawer. A quick swig in the morning becomes as natural as picking up her wand and taking the hexes off the bed curtains. And heavier things are on her mind.

The first night she forgets to take the potion is November first, 1981, and her body falls apart like it never has before.

And then, just a few months later, she paces in Narcissa’s living room—one of her many living rooms—and is nearly shouting, spitting half-formed sentences: Said _‘one of those predatory lesbians’_ and _I wasn’t interested anyway, like I’d pick anyone up at a bar_ , and _who did she think she was kidding_ , and Narcissa is asking why this would even bother her, hasn’t she dealt with worse before? And what’s _really_ the problem, Severus? And Severus turns around and yells that if you even knew—if you had any idea, you miserable, worthless, rich cunt without enough brains to fill a fucking kettle, if you knew the kind of things I’ve been through, maybe you wouldn’t feel the need to patronize me with your fucking pity because I don’t want it, I don’t want it, all right? And not caring that she isn’t making any sense. And getting savage pleasure from Narcissa’s shattered face. And going home and pacing in her office and fighting for hours against rage and tears that squeeze her ribcage like a bellows. She says _he_ , and _murderer_ , and _worthless inhuman maggot_ and wastes all her best insults on herself.

Then it’s Albus taking her wand at night, her poisons at night. It’s needing permission to use her locked-up knives. But she knows all the Muggle tricks, ironically, for getting that brand off her wrist.

And then it’s Lucius sitting beside the bed, pressing the red button over and over as Severus gets her bearings. The room is very white. Lucius grips the bandages on her wrists too hard and asks _why_ she thought this was would work. And what can they do now, to help. Because they would do anything. Severus doubts it. She knows the price of _anything,_ and it isn’t one Lucius is willing to give.

The first time she gets out of bed just to spite someone is March 14, 1982. The first time she marks a day off on her wall calendar with a fat black Sharpie is March 25. She keeps that up for a while. The first time she forgets is January 10, 1986, the same day she is late for class because the girl she slept with didn’t set her alarm. The first time she publishes anything that gets real recognition is June 1, 1987, in _The Practical Potioneer,_ of all things. That stupid little rag! She would be ashamed if she wasn’t so damn proud.

The first time she looks at Draco and thinks, _Christ, I’m getting old_ , is August 29, 1990. She is thirty. _Sixty-one half-years old._ And it’s the first time she realizes that her life is as close to together as it can be. And there is still so much left to come.

The first time she sees Harry Potter, she takes stock quickly. Everyone notices his eyes, but he’s inherited Lily’s nose, too. Severus supposes you only ever notice someone else’s nose when there’s something wrong with your own. Taking care of him is like running a race you thought you had already lost, only to find out that there are seven more mandatory laps left, and you’re already a mile behind.

She will never be anyone’s mother. She is too much like Eileen.

When Lupin and Black and Pettigrew all come back, she has to wonder if any other old schoolmates faked their own deaths and hid out in animals. The ginger cat, for one, is suspect.

And not long after that she loses the thread. She doesn’t so much have a life, as she is the stage crew for other peoples’ lives. After all the John Le Carré books she’s read, she knows that if a spy spends too much time spying, he forgets who he really is. He becomes a complete act, a self-created work of fiction. But Severus has never had a “real self” to break away from and return to. That’s such a ridiculous thought. She has been so many people that it’s like trying to pick which near-identical edition of a book to buy; what’s the point?

* * *

The first time she goes out dancing with Mateo, as she is getting ready, she sees her own reflection in his stand-up mirror. It’s only the dress she doesn’t like any more; all her dresses are tight from the waist to the knee, as if trying to make a point. _Yes, I have hips._ Mateo walks up behind her and wraps his arms around her, and she remembers how Lily’s dresses used to explode out from the waist like upside-down tulips, as if she was a ginger Audrey Hepburn, two decades too late. If she complains enough, Mateo will walk out onto the landing and yell _Sophía, can I borrow your closet?_ despite Severus’ protestations. But when he whispers _beautiful_ in her ear, she’ll almost believe it.

He says she loves his car more than she loves him, and it’s nearly true. It’s everything a car should be, red and chrome and soft-topped, and Severus drives it far faster than she should. Mateo says she must have a death wish, driving like that, and it is funny to watch him cowering in the passenger seat. But she doesn’t have a death wish; now that’s the opposite of true. _A life wish_. Instead, she puts the top down and lets the wind mess up her hair, cut shorter now than it ever has been, just chin length. This morning, she thought she was brave enough to go out with the red knot of scars on her neck showing, but she quibbled at the last minute and hid them under a silk scarf instead. It won’t last much longer, though. Every day she can feel her fear draining away.

Far more forgotten, now, are the scars on her wrists, one hidden by a gold watchband, the other circling the underside of her wrist like a thin white bracelet.

Here is a secret: What she does love more than Mateo is his family.

She changes her name, even though she never thought she would. She’s just always hated the Spanish “o” ending. Severa sounds odd too, however, and she is relieved when Mateo’s _abuela_ , Marisol, quickly transmutes it into Severina and finally Rena. And Rena she stays. The uncountable children constantly running through Marisol’s kitchen call her Tía Rena, and she calls them _Stay out of your grandmother’s flower pots_ and _If you put those filthy fingers into my cuernos so help me I’ll snatch you baldheaded._ Within just a few weeks, she becomes Marisol’s personal favorite, possibly because no one else will listen to an eighty year old woman explain in great detail the one and only truly correct recipe for _Rosca de Reyes_ , and possibly because no one but Rena can recreate it to Marisol’s satisfaction.

But Rena isn’t just here for Mateo and pastry making. She writes, too, from memory, all the potions she’s ever invented, and she works at the magical biotech labs in Guanajuato with Mateo’s sister Isadora. They get drinks after work, and slowly their stories spill out to one another, long kite strings made out of their bittersweet pasts, pulled out of each other as painful as sinew. Isadora’s is just as long and complex as Rena’s, and explains her two young children, and her fear of chickens, and the deep lines around her eyes. They walk slowly through parks in the evening, watching young couples and wondering when they became middle-aged.

For Rena, each of these evenings is as sweet a gift as the lumpy _conchas_ Isadora’s children occasionally leave on her windowsill. She would never eat them, but still…. Somehow, time and good company have smoothed the roughest of her edges. _Sea glass, middle aged._

Her book is published in the summer of 2010, authored by Rena Princeps. Well, she is not giving up _everything_ of her old life, after all. And a few months later, she finally makes the potion. This time, it will last forever, a permanent change. No more vials of pink potion to swallow every morning. It’s taken her years of work, and more years of testing, and Isadora’s help at the Guanajuato lab. Potions aren’t meant to last forever, but this one does.

She throws a party, even though she isn’t the party-throwing type. All her friends from work and the neighborhood come to toast her book and inventions, and when she’s had about as much as she can take of company, she gets Marisol to shoo everyone away, and she escapes upstairs to her bedroom.

* * *

Rena slips through the door and leans back against it, her mind still buzzing with the aftermath of the party. Slowly, she comes back to herself, back to the darkening blue bedroom, lights off and window open, letting the warm, humid evening breeze ruffle the papers spread over the desk and taped to the walls. There, in the first empty moment in a long while, she sees the room anew. It’s hard to believe, but her whole life is here: dresses in the closet, jeans thrown over the chair backs, caldrons stacked in a corner, work notes piled on and around every available surface, books sprawled open on the rumpled bed. Her room is a silent, frozen explosion of life.

She pulls off her red dress, showers, and grabs pajamas from an open drawer, wanting comfortable clothes now, maybe forever. The bottle of new, ruby red potion sits on the desk, waiting with the cold solemnity of inanimate things.

In the darkening twilight, Rena sits cross-legged on her bed, and reaches out carefully for the bottle. It feels, she thinks, like a ceremony or a coronation, like someone should be waiting with holy oil, or to start up a choir. Mateo is out somewhere; Rena hasn’t seen him all day. If he comes home drunk again, she decides, she will tell him to take his things and never come back. She is too old, now, to put up with anything but peace.

A toast is what’s needed, so, feeling a little foolish, Rena breaks the seal and raises the red bottle to the empty room. After all, this potion marks the end of a fifty-year era. _To Tobias Jr., T.J., Severus, Sev, Snivellus, the Half-Blood Prince, Severa, Tía Rena, Rena Princeps. Every incarnation, every step of the way…_ She pauses, unsure of what comes next. She is still so unused to self-praise. So she starts with what she has been hearing all day:

_Rena, congratulations._

And then:

_Severus, be brave. If I could go back and give you a second of my happiness, you would never be afraid._

She waits, as if listening for a response from the past. And then, in an instant, lifts the bottle to her lips and swallows the potion, grimacing as if it were hard alcohol. Keeping her eyes closed, she lets bottle and hand drop to her crossed legs, and is still.

Distantly, through the open window, the sound of shouting children, their feet slapping on the dusty roads, drifts in. The next breeze brings a new coolness: that of night, or perhaps of fall. The twilight has darkened to such a deep blue; it’s like being under the sea, and, in the trees next to the house, the noise of cicadas is more texture than sound. Behind Rena, a streetlight switches on, bathing the room in orange. Sweat seeps through the bends in her knees, and two floors beneath, the ubiquitous _mariachi_ music starts up, the kind she complains about day and night.

Here is a secret: In the burgeoning darkness, still with her eyes closed, Rena smiles at the familiar, frantic, joyful sound. She loves it.

* * *

And the vials of hot pink potion disappear from her bedside.


End file.
